


Departure

by camakitsune



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 07:32:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17803715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camakitsune/pseuds/camakitsune
Summary: Link has a final visit with the spirit who aided him before returning home from his quest. But the hero's shade is skeptical about whether Link is making the right choice.





	Departure

For most of his life, Link rarely had any reason to venture far from Ordon Village. At the worst, a stray sheep might wander from the fold, and Link needed to round it up before something in the woods made a meal out of it. Outside of these isolated incidents, his home province was largely unknown to him.

Yet after traveling across the other provinces and habitats of Hyrule, a familiarity pervaded even the portions of Ordona that were unexplored by Link until very recently. The particular types of grasses that grew in thick, crowded clusters rather than smooth, wide fields – a favorite for grazing animals. The standard font etched into wooden signs made a softer mimicry of handwriting here than the hard blocks of Lanayru. Even the cicada song was different in other places – sometimes quick chirps; in others, high trills staggered with pauses; in Ordona, hundreds of long calls layered into a single low drone.

He planned to return to Ordon Village before nightfall. These cicadas didn’t cut their show so close to dark that he needed to hurry quite yet. Epona traveled exactly as urgently as he requested, and she had more than earned the luxury of a slow mosey through the province.

She knew home was close, maybe she knew it better and earlier than Link did. So her hesitation and impatient pawing at the earth came as little surprise when he stopped and dismounted her in a little cranny that was very much not Ordon Village.

But he had to stop here while they were passing through. Something compelled him to, or rather, it requested him to do so with a faint song whispered under the cicadas. The stone here had done so much for him. It deserved at least the respect of having its call answered.

He crouched by the stone to inspect it, wondering how exactly he should answer. Alone as he was, he didn’t wish to try his skill at howling in his human shape. Maybe he could whistle with one of the Ordona grasses that lent themselves so well to coaxing out tones. As he considered it, in his head rang that song that both filled his heart with a cold weight and lifted it, soft and airy, from his doubts.

“Play something if you wish, but I don’t think there’s much left for you to heal,” advised an aged, familiar voice.

At Link’s side, the hero’s shade towered over his crouched form, somehow appearing even further away than that first time it threw him to his back in a mimicry of battle. And even now, it remained fixed in a stance fit for an oncoming fight: legs a little wide, knees a little bent, sword and shield ready at its sides.

“Is that what this song is for?”

“What song?”

Link looked at the stone again. Nothing about it had changed, as far as he could tell.

“Whatever you’re hearing must be in your head. Unless you’ve found a way to keep your wolf senses in this form.” Its voice floated with a levity Link might call amusement.

Perhaps the shade was right, and he had only imagined the memory of the song that had been whispered to him through this stone. Had he only made it up because he wanted to see the spirit again?

“I didn’t know any other way to make you show up,” he confessed.

“I’ve lingered here far longer than you know. Perhaps my ties to this world were selfish, but you would misjudge me to think I wouldn’t take the time to look for you.”

Link stood, so that addressing the spirit wouldn’t require him to tilt his head _quite_ so far. “Good thing you’re selfish. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“So you’ve seen to that man’s defeat. I no longer sense his presence.”

“He’s dead.”

“I can never forget the pain I’ve witnessed and suffered by his doing. But because of you, I was able to cast it aside long enough to pass you my teachings. Now, because of you, I can finally cast this form aside, too.”

The translucent wisps holding its worn armor into a human shape dissipated first. The armor floated empty before Link, until it too crumbled to a dust the winds easily swept away. Only a skull with a single red glow in one of its eyes remained. It fell with a soft thud on the dirt, and the red light faded to dark.

Perhaps Link had expected more ceremony from the fallen warrior’s spirit, or he wasn’t sure of the respectful way to leave such paltry remains of a long-dead man. Either way, he stared a moment longer at the tipped-over skull, until Epona’s snorts behind him tugged at his attention.

There, a boy dressed in green, small and translucent and no taller than a tween, commended Epona with slow, reverent strokes to her snout. Link couldn’t tell whether or not she knew he was there, but at this point, he had no right to doubt the common knowledge that canines and horses were sensitive to ghosts.

The boy turned his head to Link, and a pit formed in his stomach. With a smile, he stretched a scar that must have been torn open and healed well before his death. It reached from his forehead, past where his eye would have been were it not a casualty of the injury, down to his chin.

Whatever discredit Link was about to give himself at having been taught by a kid all this time died when he saw that healed gash on the boy’s face.

“What’s her name?” the spirit asked. It was a child’s sharp voice, far more interested in his horse now than long forgotten battles and teachings of the sword.

“Epona,” Link answered.

His smile deepened, and he gave her another few strokes. She pressed her nose forward. “So what’s next?”

“We’re going back to Ordon Village.” He approached the two, and he patted Epona’s side.

“For good?”

Link only answered with a short nod. What else was there to do next?

But the child hero clearly thought there must be something else – his brow furrowed, and he waited for Link to go on. But Link had nothing to tell him, and so the spirit gave Epona more idle pets. “You’ve seen a lot. Are you sure you can leave it behind?”

He wasn’t wrong. Link could never forget everyone he helped and who helped him out there on his journey. But there was nothing left for him “out there,” not any more than he would expect a Zora to come travelling all the way to Ordona for a vague sense of adventure.

Link knew he wasn’t the most eloquent guy, but in this smaller, also less eloquent form, the hero’s shade didn’t make expressing himself seem so daunting. “I’m not leaving anything behind. I belong here.”

“Do you know you won’t die here wishing you did more?”

It shouldn’t have been any surprise that a ghost would approach such a morbid topic so casually. But even with that unflinching delivery, something delicate remained in the question. Link didn’t quite get it. Even if the boy had died in the middle of a quest, hadn’t he felt the cold breath of homesickness down his neck at night? Had he lingered so long that he forgot the faces and places he must have pined for reunion with?

“I don’t know that,” Link answered honestly. “But that’s not a reason to run away from my life here.”

The spirit’s one-eyed gaze drifted somewhere else, still wildly skeptical of the decision Link had made without a second thought. “Going back to your old life... you really think it's enough?”

“This is my home. Didn’t you want to go back home when you were alive?”

The spirit still wouldn’t look at him. He stilled, no longer bothering to distract himself with Epona. Only now did the scar across his face and the memory of his expertise fall out of relevance. With those decorations ignored, only the impression of a child who didn’t have all the answers remained standing in front of Link. Had time and the afterlife really erased something so important, all while leaving intact the knowledge of battle and the pride of the “hero” title?

He did say his reasons for lingering were selfish.

He finally spoke. “If you have a home, then you’ll always wish you were there, won’t you?” He met Link’s eye. “No matter where you go.”

Link nodded. The boy spoke like he was only now realizing something.

Who exactly was he? What was his connection to the slain demon king, and what trials and secrets had he encountered during his own journey? There was so much Link didn’t know about the fallen hero. But the question that burned hottest was perhaps what anyone else would consider the most mundane.

“Did you ever go home between traveling?”

The boy smiled again. He lifted his hand to make a “come hither” gesture, and with the proximity already between them, Link guessed that taking a knee was the appropriate response. The shade raised both hands now to plant them heavy on Link’s shoulders, but he felt no contact and heard no sound when he did it.

“I saw you grow so much. I don’t want to waste it and let you end up like me. But you’re right. Being somewhere you belong…”

He stopped short without finishing his sentence, and his smile went crooked. With a shake of his head, he abandoned the attempt to say something, and instead shut his eye and pressed his forehead to Link’s. The gesture felt like nothing, but Link felt all the warmth in it anyway. He shut his eyes as well, more than grateful for the sincere acknowledgment from the hero’s wandering soul.

“I’m so proud of you, Link.”

The sound of his name on the child hero’s voice sent a shock through Link. His eyes shot open, but there was no one with him save for an increasingly restless horse. He looked around him to confirm. The spirit left no trace this time – even the skull he left to plop on the ground by the howling stone was gone.

Time to reach Ordon Village before dark was getting short. Cicada song grew sparse as the surrounding light transitioned from early-sunset gold to canopy-filtered blue.

Somehow, Link knew for sure this time that the hero’s spirit needed no further send-off. His unanswered question was his own to ponder. He pushed himself to his feet, and with Epona’s agreement, the two continued the last stretch home.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are greatly appreciated :>


End file.
